Perpetual
by fauxPROJECT
Summary: Five senses. Strength is gained but home is coveted. Kakashi can't handle another broken woman, he won't. Kakashi Hatake, Sakura Haruno, Team Seven.


Summary: Five senses. Strength is gained but home is coveted. Kakashi can't handle another broken woman, he won't. Kakashi Hatake, Sakura Haruno, Team Seven.

- five senses are the highlights.  
- parenthesis is past tense and Kakashi thought.  
- stab at general KakashixSakura.  
- stab at the complexity of Team Seven and it's 'cycle or circle' they create.  
- odd perspectives, alot of emotions, fragments live alot, and just insert your own take.

Perpetual.  
_(You're a lonely soul, because you can't let go of anything you hold.)  
- Say (All I Need)

* * *

_**i. sound**

(He can still hear her cries. They are strangled and high-pitched like the girl she once was, she tries to be strong but-,)

Her voice is one that is hard to grasp. She settles against the tree in the shade, the safe haven from the sun as she speaks with Naruto. Ignoring her disheveled appearance, that would no longer surprise anyone.

It's more like the waterfall than the breeze, Kakashi decides. It does not weave through the branches and in the leaves in the highest points in the skies.

(She cannot climb that high. "Sasuke-kun!" It's a screech of desperation. "Sasuke-kun!" Her voice bleeds sometimes, and it's horrid.)

"Kakashi-sensei," She inquires. His joints do not tighten, nor does his heart beat faster. He sits up and his back strains slightly from keeping the position too long and squints his lone eye. The sun's too bright, and the grass is too green and he can barely hear her.

"Everything alright?" His eyelashes flutter trying to deflect the bright rays of the sun, and the sonorous resonance of her voice.

(She talks unsure, and wonders too much. Kakashi looks away, cause he's heard this before. Once before when he was a child-smaller in stature but old within the confines of his mind-and he cannot handle another broken woman.)

He can see the bottoms of her and his feet in front of him, and he glances up briefly and sees their darkened faces and hands. He can hear them mutter something about being old, and he grins slightly. He shifts and his grey silver locks move with him as he languidly resumes his position lying down.

(She speaks of working with Tsunade, and all the things she's healed and brought back to the living. He remarks about someone, and her voice quivers, and he always thought that her being a medic was definitely a misnomer for her. _Heal yourself Sakura_.)

- "I'm just enjoying my Icha Icha Paradise a little too much." They laugh, _she_ laughs. But he still doesn't take their, _her_ hand, cause he's stuck on the string of her voice.

(She can't do it, and she speaks it so vividly that she doesn't realize.)

**ii. smell**

"My, my." Kakashi tsks at her as she trudges out of the doors to the hospital. "Someone looks as if they've just traveled to hell and back." She chuckles expectantly at him,

(Although still a chuunin, and screeching for Sasuke she takes up that white uniform and works hard and long, because she needs to grow still.)

And she hugs him, albeit awkward but it's always been. And she smells of bleach and the bathroom soap that always smell like they burnt used latex gloves for it. He shoves his hands in his pockets, and his book is on the edge and ready to drop. It's still hot and the scent of warm dirt beneath their sandals waft through the streets of the village, and the sun is still welcoming their skin.

She lifts a forearm to her still large forehead and wipes the sweat rolling from it. She doesn't take the time to undo her hair from the worn-out bun atop of her head.

They talk uneasily and Kakashi is seemingly a bit inattentive, but mahogany bricks are weighing on his mind. His eye travels to her talking form as she hunches over with a pile of books in her lanky arms; she's still lean and thin. Kakashi stops for a minute and opens his mouth, not waiting for her to shut up.

And he utters words like, _'train, become jounin, me, Naruto, strength, and Sasuke_.' and she stops dead in her tracks.

(She isn't one to be stuck in the hospital. Kakashi knows Sakura has dreams, and healing won't help. He needs her to get strong, strong, strong. Like he should have done a couple years ago.) - _What does he know?_

She hugs him tightly by Ichiraku, and the salt from her tears override the crude smell of boiling noodles and homemade broth. He uncomfortably places one hand on her back and gives her a couple pats on the back as she incoherently says - 'yes, yes, yes.' - over and over again.

(He leans towards her head, and her scent drifts to his nose. Its potency is stronger than the hospital, or the griminess of her tears. She is spicy, not the wistful and lightness of nature.)

It's lamentable that he had not thought of this before. And that he was left standing there a few moments later with the pungent smell of noodles and Naruto's slobbering over his cuisine, alone.

**iii. taste**

She slugs him, and slugs him good. Kakashi doesn't falter just because she found an unexpected hole in his defensive. It was silly and childish, but he's taught her well. If he's taught her the taste of copper crimson liquid, he can surely handle it himself as he feels his mouth and lips burst with blood beneath his mask.

("Tsunade has taught me this, so I'll just give it a go, and you can evaluate, right?" Kakashi smiles as he sips his tea through his mask. He doesn't even like green tea. He wonders if Tsunade has taught her how to be strong like ANBU. No, no, no. He doesn't want that. He's old, he doesn't know. He doesn't know anymore.)

"I guess this is an omen," Kakashi grumbles with a nonchalant tone, and rubs his cheek like it actually affects him. "To grab something to eat that is." He licks his lips, and he remembers when he lost his first tooth. But it was nothing like the blood spilt in a fight, nothing like the blood spilt in your first kill.

(Sakura bites into the dango, and takes a swig of her drink before she casually begins to eat less and silence stains the air between the two. Naruto has long left, it's just them. "I want to keep training." She smiles, and he puts his elbow on top of the table and a finger in the crevice of his clothed lips. "Team Seven. It's seems so real now." He wants to disagree, because something's not right. So he does and she disagrees, in that nothing is never right, only reality exists. It is what it is) _- Reality is that Kakashi knows Team Seven is one giant paradox. Then again Team Seven is a combination in a different dimension where two plus two equals 5, perhaps._

She shakes her head and for a moment Kakashi's heart feels like it's going to combust as her hands come to his face. He flinches back, gently knocking them away.

"Don't think you'll get my mask off that easy." He tries to jokingly chastise.

Sakura looks at him like he's mental before her hands came to his clothed face and turned green.

It's silent for several moments before one of them speaks.

"I want to say it, but I can't." She whispers as her fingers are healing, slowly. And Kakashi begins to shift under his feet, knowing that she can heal faster than this.

He sighs, as she starts crying silently in front of him. She doesn't sob or hiccup. He makes no attempt to move.

"It's the last thing he said to me, and I still can't say it." She mumbles, her fingers trailing his masked jaw line, healing slowly. Kakashi closes his eyes as the blood in his mouth starts to fade and the words - 'Thank you, Thank you,' echo inside of his head.

"Don't say anything then." He concludes, and he brings his fingers to his blood caked mask.

(Kakashi realizes these wounds are far worse than a flesh wound filled with the stench of peroxide. He thinks of the situation as a rotting carcass, and animals are feeding on the corpse's insides.)

He's mask less and doesn't know what to do, as he's vulnerable to the slow working fingers of the kunoichi. He closes his eyes and knows his bare lips and jaw are not enough to seal the wounds for his lone kunoichi teammate. But he looks at her as her fingers trace his bloodied lips and it makes Kakashi stop thinking for a moment.

All he could revel in was the taste of Sakura's fingers on his lips.

(Kakashi wonders if he's maybe spawning Sasuke Uchiha all over again, but she doesn't know the taste of victory, and maybe opening the wounds more will provide the healing process more benefit to her. Because maybe the taste of closure will be enough, because happiness is a dish far to expensive for Kakashi's wallet.)

**iiii. sight**

Kakashi notices how uncomfortable and awkward she feels as they are jumping from tree limb to tree limb. They are accompanied by two other chuunin, and they are not on a mission to save the missing link, Sasuke-kun.

("Find the courier, capture, obtain the information, and assassinate him." The Fifth Hokage states simply, but her amber eyes dig into the four shinobi in front of her. Kakashi feels it and knows it. He can see the mixture of emotions. Pride? Disappointment? "There may be two other shinobi with him, but they are, should be, low ranking chuunin.")

"We're about a half day early." They come to a stop, and he sees Sakura tremble and wobble as she finally catches up.

"Probably not that early." Kakashi adds, "They will probably scout ahead, at least one of them. One of them is probably a long range shinobi, and another close range so we still have to be inconspicuous." With a grunt, he rests on his bottom while in his mind declares the clearing safe for the moment. He turns to the left and watches as Sakura lets out a sigh and jumps to the tree limb above him and awkwardly trying to relax for a moment.

("Thank you." He about drops his book as he peers up to her emerald eyes, basking in the morning sun and looking up at him. "I'm strong now, Kakashi-sensei. Very strong." She looks away smiling, a little more confident than the days before. He runs a tired hand through his hair. Smiling with an eye, "For Sasuke-kun, it's all for that." She chuckles, "Us.")

He stands up, ignoring the kinks and tightness in his shoulders as he scans the area with his sharingan. His throat is dry and everyone looks slightly apprehensive.

"Formation Quadrant." Kakashi seethes, and suddenly Sakura looks brighter, attentive, and more ready than anything to start going. They go off into pairs, but distance still lingers between the four shinobi.

The sun is starting to set, and his heart beats faster with the impending fight because it's starts as an exploding tag goes off in the distance.

("The end?" Kakashi ponders, fixated on the same word for the past fifteen minutes since he's been training with Sakura. "Yeah, you know. When everything finally comes to a close." She asks stretching out her arms, "Do you think we will see it? It'll be like this huge realization? When we're like, this is it, it's over." Kakashi swallows the lump in his throat and looks to the treetops as the green leaves cascade over them gracing them with shade. "Hm." He murmurs, not really giving an answer.) - _He's still stuck on the beginning. Endings are too much for his heart. But then again this is a phenomenon._

Kakashi's there for her first kill, in cold hearted battle. And he watches as she thrusts a turquoise hand through his chest, and her eyes are wild as his kunai comes close to her beating heart. Dark has just fallen, but her green eyes still glow as well as her hands. The corpse drops to the ground and the emotions that she feels are limpid on her face.

(He sees her cry. Her tears are redemptional and copious; she tries to be free but-,)

Kakashi decides that he doesn't care much for beginnings anymore. He wants do-overs, and wants to live in the pretext of a happy ending that's only just begun. Without Sakura burned into the back of his eyelids.

**iiiii. touch**

He casually snatches the white hat from her head and the rich cotton soothes his callused fingers.

"Kakashi-sensei!"

(Her hands were still soft as ever but her skin was missing a certain heat as she lays limp in the crisp sheets of the hospital bed. She opens her mouth to begin, but it's painful anymore to speak and she stops. The metal of the chair is cold against his bottom as he leans over. Frustrated and without options he gives possibly her best advice, "Just say it.")

Kakashi keeps a mellow trot alongside Sakura as they talk and walk. Small talk, big talk, but she talks and Kakashi's glad either way. He might talk big sometime, but for now it's not enough and he just wants Sakura do that for the both of them.

Her small shoulders brush his higher arm, and he turns his head towards her.

"I told Naruto I'm going to bed after we ate dinner." She starts, her voice smooth and comfortable. "But I don't want to Kakashi-sensei." She sighs, "I'm tired from work, but," She trails off and Kakashi-sensei knows she's burying herself in the hospital again.

(She returns to the hospital and Kakashi knew that was to happen. She was strong, but Sasuke-kun isn't here and living normal cold hearted shinobi lives wasn't right. Big adventures and endeavors were what was to always happen, and always for him.)

They travel into the back woods by the creeks and the rocky edges that peer over the edge and gave them a good view of the village and the sky. The branches and relative thick brush grabbed and pinched them as they walked along. Kakashi could hear an occasional grunt and complain about certain 'idiotic trees and plants.'

He crashes ungracefully on his bottom once they reach a small clearing that looks down on the village and beseeches the sky. The pink haired girl took her place about a foot in front of him, her backside touching his feet as she curls her knees to her chin.

"Home." She whispers hoarsely. Kakashi furrows his brow and slouches forward.

"Hm?" He coaxes. She leans back on his ankles more and gazes at the sky.

"I wonder that's why Sasuke-kun left." Sakura smiles a bit, "Because Itachi took away his home, and he didn't know how to replace that home or figure out where his true home was."

"You think?"

"I know, sort of." She sighs and turns towards him, placing her hands on his shins. "No, I do. Because my home is with you guys, even Sasuke-kun and I could never imagine leaving it behind."

Kakashi glances at her and realizes she's strong. Strong and smart already. And that's enough. Maybe she doesn't need to assassinate people like in ANBU, as long as she learns and loves.

("I'm sorry." His voice is like a dying flame. "I just wanted you to be strong, and be able to reach him." _I was so wrong. _"I wanted you to forget, sometimes you know? Because I couldn't, and maybe I could have put it behind with you." _I wanted your heart, and did all the wrong ways._)

Swiftly Kakashi grabs her wrists and twists her so her back is toward his chest and he raises her right hand, while loosely grasping her other one. He carefully unfolds her index finger like she's porcelain and points it to the night sky.

(He spends the night showing her constellations in the sky, and showing how everything is connected. Perhaps she cannot heal herself, but they may be able to heal each other.)

"This one may be way out here, but it's still connected. Home is in your heart, Sakura. " He whispers, "and in others."

- _Home is brash vibrations of Naruto's voice, the stench of sweat after training, the taste of his father's last meal, the sight of Sasuke's dark blue hair, and the feel of Sakura next to him. _

And he's alright that maybe Team Seven's personal equation of life is two plus two equals five. For it's never ending.


End file.
